Workload, space, and personnel of clinical chemistry laboratories in teaching hospitals.

The resources needed to operate a clinical chemistry laboratory are known only as rough approximations. In order to gather more information about these resources, a 13-page questionnaire was completed by 50 pathology departments of which 38 departments provided adequate information about their clinical chemistry section to permit adequate data analysis. This study provides the results for resource and workload factors, and significant regression analyses among these factors for the whole clinical chemistry section and the subsections of general chemistry, urinalysis, endocrinology, enzymology, lipid analysis, and toxicology. These data provide a basis for evaluating the current needs of clinical chemistry and for making projections for the future.